Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: Artists, Lovers, Outsiders

22 Oct 2025-8 Mar 2026

The Two Roberts, Photographer Felix Man, Getty Images

Overview

Explore the lives and work of the ‘Two Roberts’ — Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, two Ayrshire artists who first met at Glasgow School of Art in 1933. This infamous duo, both lovers and creative partners, played a vital role in mid-20th century British art influencing contemporaries including Bacon, Freud & Minton.

This exhibition, the first in England since 1962, surveys their remarkable creative journey from 1930s Glasgow to wartime Europe, through London during the Blitz, ending in tragedy in 1962. This exhibition traces their spectacular rise and fall and puts them back where they were—at the centre of an extraordinary creative landscape in a rapidly changing world.

It includes their time in Lewes, Sussex, where they lived from 1947-49, supported by the Miller sisters, patrons connected to the Bloomsbury Group. Through a display of paintings, lithographs, etchings, drawings, and archival materials, the show celebrates the personal and artistic bond which shaped their lives and careers leaving a lasting impact on European modernism.

The exhibition is curated by writer and broadcaster Damian Barr.